Throwing light on black arts and the secret world of the spad

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Damian McBride’s spectacular fall from grace has illuminated the secretive world of the special adviser, a sphere that most would rather have kept out of the public glare.

The truth about special advisers, or “spads”, is more complicated and less lurid than the wilder aspects of Mr McBride’s tenure at No 10 might suggest. There are 80 of them, they cost the taxpayer about £6 million a year and, despite Gordon Brown’s claim to have curbed their influence, they have never been so controversial in a job without formal description and a caste without formal power but obsessed with status